I always find it staggering that the carnage on the roads caused by automobiles largely goes unnoticed. Somewhere along the line every growing infant is taught that autos are dangerous, you've got to do everything you can to avoid putting yourself in harms way and that's just the way life is. So every year (as of writing) approximately 1,170,000 people are killed by an automobile in the world, and 43,000 are killed in the USA. But somehow most people don't even give a second thought as to why, despite all the increases in car safety equipment (antilock brakes, airbags, impact bars, crumple zones, traction control etc. etc.) this figure is so high.
If say, computer viruses were killing this many people a year you'd bet your life that something would be done about it. Or how about if airlines were killing this many Americans per year?
And lets not forget the number of injuries caused by cars which is now almost 3 million annually. Add to that the cost of providing emergency services, treating injured people, loss of earnings from injuries and loss of future earnings and damage to society caused by death.... Well then you have an annual cost of tens, if not hundreds of billions (given that airlines value a human life at around $1.5 million for insurance purposes). The problem is no one seems to care very much even though automobile accidents are the greatest cause of accidental death in the USA by a factor of three and they account for about as many deaths as ALL other leading causes of accidents combined (as this report shows).
So I'll ask you this simple question: why is is that pedestrians and autos are routinely combined in the same environment when in a factory any machine as dangerous as an auto would be bolted to a floor and surrounded by safety cages, flashing lights and big emergency shutoff switches? The answer is probably just historical - that roads used to only be occupied by only pedestrians, bicycles and horse drawn carriges which hardly ever killed anyone and usually gave you a fighting chance to dive out of the way. Autos should be on their own entirely separate space, just like a freeway and pedestrians should enjoy complete freedom on our urban streets and city centers.
Or how about this one: why after all the technological innovation we have are cars still manufactured to exceed speed limits, sometimes by factors or two or more (even on a freeway)? All arguments for this I've heard are just plain hogwash and its about time some enterprising lawyer launched the worlds biggest class action lawsuit on behalf of everyone killed by a speeding car.
Ditto for: cars that start when the driver is intoxicated, cars that continue to drive when no longer legally licensed or insured, cars that don't automatically take control when the driver falls asleep or stops paying attention (like yapping on the cellphone), cars that will drive themselves dangerously close to another vehicle, cars that will drive themselves into a brick wall. Etc. etc. etc.... the list goes on. The tragedy is solutions for all these problems have been found and are available if only someone would be bold enough to make them a requirement.
So if you're wondering why I'm so down on automobiles today, well I just read yet another newspaper report about a pedestrian killed crossing a street, and the driver was injured but released with no charges. The assumption is the pedestrian was at fault. Goodness knows I see enough people wandering aimlessly in the middle of the road every time I drive home at night. But I'm wondering, well who really was to blame? It's easy to blame the dumb pedestrian who was just giving Darwin a hand, but shouldn't we dig deeper and point the finger of blame at people's apathy to really do anything about the car problem we all have?
Ultimately that apathy is caused by people and their idea that 43,500 people dead every year is just nothing to write home about, let alone blog about. But let me tell you this - 43,500 people every year is about 1 in 6,666 of us Americans every year and if you live to be 70 then that's a 1 in 95 chance of being killed by an auto, or 1 in 1.3 chance of being injured by one. Furthermore, if you have a hundred friends and relatives then the odds are, in your life time, a least one of them will die in a car accident. Me? My father was hit and killed by a car, a friend at school was killed by a car, my girlfriend's fiancee was killed by a car (driven by a drunk driver) and I've been in four car wrecks (one caused by myself) but thankfully never seriously injured. Every day I drive my biggest fear is I'll inadvertantly kill someone else - not myself - someone else.
I rest my case - this country is driving itself to death.